


Where the Suns Burn Brightest

by obirain



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:40:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28511316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obirain/pseuds/obirain
Summary: In the aftermath of the Jedi Purge, you and Obi-Wan try to reach each other by whatever means possible.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Reader, Obi-Wan Kenobi/You
Kudos: 10





	Where the Suns Burn Brightest

Space is cold and the Force is silent. Here in the darkness you remember, in a dream of a dream, when it warmed you like a never-ending dawn, when it blazed with the gentle light of ten thousand stars. Ten thousand Jedi Knights, all nurturing and nurtured by their shared connection to the Force. All gone.

What was the moment? How did you feel it? Was it like a ship blasted to smithereens, one glorious moment of death and destruction with silence in its wake? Or was it the slow recession of the tides, further and further, leaving nothing but a mud flat still damp with the memory of an ocean?

You… You don’t remember. You only know the nothingness—a nothing which is somehow infinitely worse than anything this new Empire could ever inflict on you.

But then—as you listen, as you _wait—_ there’s a something.

A candle flickers from parsecs away. It calls to you as if its light is for your eyes alone. Serenity such as you haven’t felt in months washes over you. You know this light. You know its call, and the fading scent of home. It pulls you in like a tractor beam over the black, polished glass, or the still, still water. Maybe it’s something in-between. 

But soon your limbs hang heavy. Your lungs burn for lack of air. The further you go, the more you fear you might implode from the strain. _No. This isn’t real,_ you tell yourself. You’re pushing into the furthest reaches of the Force, deeper than you’ve ever gone before. This is a fatigue of the mind, not of the body.

So why do you feel like you’re drowning? Why is your blood turning to clay in your veins? In the end you’re crawling, breathlessly, on your hands and knees, until every gasp feels like liquid fire in your lungs and you fall to the floor. _It’s not real. It’s not real._

_“_ Come to me, my love.”

“It’s too far.” You don’t know your own strangled voice as it echoes against invisible walls. But you know _his,_ soft but clear as the day you parted. It murmurs to you from the center of the distant glow. “Where are you?”

“Come to me, love. I’m waiting for you.”

_Waiting. Waiting for_ you. _Alive, somewhere. Safe._ You force yourself to straighten beneath the anvil on your shoulders. You’ll make it to that light if it rips you apart from the inside. 

You step forward, invigorated with fresh resolve and clean air. 

You step. And you fall.

No, you _plunge—_ straight into the unforgiving depths. They swallow you whole; you don’t even have time to scream. The light disappears. You fall for what feels like an eternity, either that or thirty seconds. Enough time for your eyes to glaze over the bubbles that swirl around you like stars. They’re mesmerizing. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too terrible if you drowned here in the deepest recesses of the Force. Starlight above and water all around, with his voice reverberating in your skull. _Safe. Alive._

_Waiting._

Your eyes close.

A new pressure on your arm sends you whirling off course. Fingertips dig into your skin hard enough to bruise, pulling harder and harder against the downward current until you think it might rip you in half. But no matter how much you prepare yourself, it never comes.

Instead, you see the light again, far up above. It’s growing… closer? No, wider. Taller. Brighter. _Too_ bright; too hot. Those fingers, strong as they are, slip from your forearm to your wrist, from your wrist to your palm, and off entirely. You tumble into the overwhelming light, alone.

“Oof!” 

You’re shocked out of limbo when you land hard on solid ground. You sit up and groan; the earth shifts beneath you. Not earth, _sand—_ miles and miles of it in every direction. The light reflects off of it like a mirror, boring into your eyes like a nail to the head. _Where are you?_

You look up. Two enormous suns hang directly overhead, brighter than any sun you’ve ever seen before. Maker, it’s sweltering. 

“Who’s there?”

Your head snaps up to the sand dune towering over you. Against the blinding sand there’s a streak of brown, and then a hood, and then a person standing before you. He throws the hood back; his mouth hangs agape save for the shape of your name on his lips.

“Obi-Wan!” You’re breathless. Your mind’s on a four second delay in the oppressive heat; your legs still ache from the landing and struggle sluggishly through the burning hot sand. But you’re _moving_ and _breathing_ and _seeing_ the man you’ve learned to mourn. 

Obi-Wan skids down the dune, arms outstretched. You collide somewhere in the middle and fall to your knees from the sheer force of it. Your hands scramble for purchase against his robes as you bury your face into his chest. He winds an arm around your waist and another into your hair, practically molding you together. 

_“Darling,”_ he breathes into your neck. His voice shakes; his fingers tremble. “You’re _—_ how _—”_

You don’t know. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is _him_ , the single beacon of light in the icy tundra of your lonely existence, a relic of days of former glory. 

“I knew I’d find you,” you whisper, pulling away just enough to trace your fingers over his cheekbones. There are new lines at the corner of his eyes and new flecks of gray in his beard, but he feels the same beneath your exploring hands. “I knew, I knew…”

Your lips ghost over his jaw. Obi-Wan tilts your chin up to meet you in a kiss. His lips are chapped but so are yours; you hardly notice as you give in to your desperation. Your fingers dig into his shoulders, his into your waist, pulling each other impossibly closer, making one out of two. 

There’s too much to say _—is this enough?_ Just to hold each other into impassioned unity _?_ With every movement of your lips, you sear your soul into his. _I love you. I need you. Make this my home, and I’ll make it yours._

“My love,” he mumbles against you. You hum. _Yours._

He tenses and pulls away. His eyes flicker with a crazed, orange light. “Wait!”

It’s too late. You gasp as you slip, shriek as you fall. You’ve been plunged into darkness again, save for the red glow dancing on Obi-Wan’s face. _Where are you?_

You look down. You’re dangling above a river of lava, splashing up mere meters below. Obi-Wan’s caught you by the forearm, struggling to pull you back up to the ledge.

“Obi—”

“Eyes up here, darling.” His voice is firm, but not firm enough to stamp out the tremor. “Don’t worry; I’ll get us home.”

Another violent plume of lava splashes up to your level, just feet away. His fingers, strong as they are, slip from your forearm to your wrist. He tightens his grip, grunting with the strain of it. Your eyes fill with tears.

_“Obi, you can’t.”_

“No!” He tugs up on your arm again; you cry out in pain. It’s useless. Hot tears fall from his eyes and land on your forehead. “Not again. Not this time.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay.” You’re crying now, too, determined to memorize his eyes. They glow in the dreadful light, twin candles against an black sky, wet with grief.

“Love—”

“Let go,” you choke. Between the sulfur in the air and the vice grip on your arm it’s hard to breathe, let alone speak. But a smile makes it to your face regardless; your tears roll from your eyes and into your open mouth. “I’ll find you.”

_“I can’t—”_

“You have to.”

His fingers slip from your wrist to your palm. 

“Wait for me.” 

And then you fall. You keep your eyes fixed on Obi-Wan’s, your only anchor as you tumble into darkness. Twin candles parsecs away. Twin suns wheeling overhead. They gleam above you no matter how far you fall, and you fall for an eternity. 

Until you hit something solid. 

Your eyes flash open. You’re lying on your side on the metal floor; your head throbs with the impact. Starlight streams through the windows. Everything is cold again.

You grab an old robe from the pile of your things in the corner. It’s much too big for you, nearly threadbare. You’ve had it so long it doesn’t smell like him anymore. But when you wrap it around your shoulders, you can _almost_ remember.

The pilot’s chair where you’d been meditating looms empty and cold, taunting you. You grip the back of it until your knuckles go white. No matter how hard you squeeze, you can’t fight off the shudder—one that turns into a violent shaking as you sob. When had the Force become so _cruel?_ Mysterious, elusive, and occasionally infuriating, yes, but never cruel. Didn’t it know your grief? Didn’t it feel the imbalance? Didn’t it sense the loss of ten thousand stars? Why had it resewn _just one_ in the sky, only to rip it away?

You’d ask, but the Force is silent.

The trembling fades along with your tears. You heave a sigh and sit down on the cold, unforgiving metal, wishing it could swallow you whole. Anything’s better than this. 

But this is what you have. Maybe things can change. Find some backwater planet, cut yourself off from the Force. Forget the silence, the darkness, the twin suns you’ll never reach. They’re just a fantasy, a dream, a dream of a dream. _It’s not real._

You reach towards the controls. Your sleeve slips. And you notice the handprint bruises painting your arm. 


End file.
